


an improbable ammonite

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ectobiology, F/M, Fluff, Grubs, Oneshot, Post-Sburb/Sgrub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade had asked you if you minded.</p><p>"Mind?" you'd repeated. "Harley, what the--"</p><p>"Shut up and think real hard before you answer," she'd insisted, black hair, white labcoat, green eyes too vivid in the actinic light of the ectobio facility. "Karkat."</p><p>"Why the livid <i>fuck</i> would you deliberately make another mutie redblood?"</p><p>"Cause," Jade had told you, looking you in the eyes--she's just about your height--and then dropping her gaze. "Scientific reasons. And also. Uh."</p>
            </blockquote>





	an improbable ammonite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laylah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/gifts).



> thanks to tatterdemalionAmberite and roachpatrol for betaing!

You wake up with the drowsy awareness of having slept luxuriously late, and stay curled in the warmth of the slime for exactly as long as it takes your brain to cycle through the elapsed time and open up your memories of the previous night. 

When your mental clock resets you sit bolt upright in the cupe, which has the normal result of making your butt sink and your knees and shoulders rise, and you only just manage to grab for the edge before you get an unintentional sopor facial. Swiping the stuff away, you haul yourself out and--still dripping green and beginning to air-dry almost immediately--hurry through to the leisureblock. 

She's there. She's there and she's not panicking and she's bent over something cradled in her arms, the long dark fall of her hair curtaining it off from your view, but she turns when she hears you and stares--and giggles. "Karkat, you're getting slime on the carpet."

You pant. "Is. Is it all right?"

" _He_ ," Jade corrects you, and looks down at her armful. "He's just fine. Woke up a little while ago and took a bottle of fish stock. He's napping."

"Are you _sure_?"

"Karkat Vantas, which person in the room has two PhDs and which person has just woken up and is still logy with green slime? Go shower, I'll make you breakfast and then you can take over the grub-cuddling duty."

She pushes back the hair, a shining black mass that almost immediately slips back over her shoulder, and grins at you. It's the same bucktoothed, irrepressible grin you saw for the first time over Trollian; the same brilliant acid-green eyes. The same Jade. 

Something about your expression must have changed, because the grin softens, curves at the edges, turns into the kind of smile you had never personally expected to have pointed at you back in the days before the game. Jade bends down to set her bundle in the padded carry-cot beside the couch, and comes over. She strokes slime-sticky hair out of your face, rubs her thumbs over your horntips, holds you through the full-body shiver this creates. "It's _okay_ , Karkat," she says, warm as your warmth, the blood under her skin the same bright shade as yours. "It's gonna be fine. You worry too much."

"It's what I do," you protest, and she hugs you tighter, chuckling. You can feel it as well as hear the little warm sound. 

"Go and shower, you immense simpleton, and then you can watch him sleeping while you eat pancakes. He sleeps very adorably, in case you were wondering."

~

You feel considerably more well-disposed toward the universe after a brief very hot shower, and put on jeans and a worn-thin T-shirt with the neck stretched out--nobody is going to see you today, this is strictly domestic. When you rejoin Jade, the smears of green on her shirt from your slimy self are drying to flakes, and she's putting on a kettle.

"Tea or coffee?" she asks. You settle down on the couch where she'd been sitting, stare down into the basket. 

"--Uh, coffee. Thanks." He's so tiny. He curls up when he's asleep, like a pillbug, his butt tucked over his head as far as it will go: he looks like an improbable ammonite. An improbable, bright-red ammonite. The work you and Jade had done in the lab had proved to your satisfaction that the crimson-A mutation was not linked to any obvious pathological syndromes, nor did it seem to alter projected lifespan from any other red-gold-bronze lowblood-spectrum individuals; and Jade had asked you if you minded. 

"Mind?" you'd repeated. "Harley, what the--"

"Shut up and think real hard before you answer," she'd insisted, black hair, white labcoat, green eyes too vivid in the actinic light of the ectobio facility. "Karkat."

"Why the livid _fuck_ would you make another mutie redblood?"

"Cause," Jade had told you, looking you in the eyes--she's just about your height--and then dropping her gaze. "Scientific reasons. And also. Uh."

"Also uh what?"

Blood had risen in her cheeks, that bright red, that unnatural red. "Also you're too good to waste. I know you don't wanna do the...the pail thing to, uh, to contribute to the next generation, that's totally up to you but...Karkat, I don't want that generation to not have someone like you."

The blush had been violent at that point and she had turned away. "Um, wow, this is totally awkward."

You had been straight-up at a loss for fucking words. "Jade."

"I know, it's dumb, sorry."

" _Jade_."

Something in your voice had caught her, and she had turned to face you, still pink. "What?"

"I think that's the nicest fucking thing anybody has ever said to me," you'd told her, and she had blinked, and you'd just said a lot of probably ill-chosen words and hugged her hard enough to make her squeak. 

~

That had been a couple of months ago. You hadn't expected the egg to hatch. You hadn't expected the hatchling to live more than a couple hours. You hadn't expected the hatchling to survive a week, two weeks, or to...uncurl, one night, last night, in your arms, and look up at you for the first time with wide scarlet eyes, waving its little grublegs, and smile the vague uncoordinated smile of someone who still wasn't too cool on small-muscle control. 

You'd yelped and Jade had hustled over to join you and just wrapped her arms round your neck and kissed you with that astonishingly soft human mouth, and the two of you just sat with him until he slept again, cooing over each amazing little pointy foot, each tuft of black hair.

He'd woken a little after three and clambered over both your laps to attack the side table, where Jade had a collection of her various artifacts, and before either of you could think to stop him had glommed onto the giant African land snail shell and wriggled inside, exactly like a seadweller larva. How the fuck did a grub with your mutant blood even...know how to do that...goddamn, and how were you supposed to get him out? 

You and Jade had looked at one another with identical expressions of OH FUCK. Small, belligerent red eyes were juuust visible round the curve of the shell, and when you reached in you got your fingers bitten for your pains, just as Jade had predicted. "Leave him alone," she'd said, and went to the kitchen. After a few minutes she came back with what looked like thin slices of sushi-grade tuna on a plate. 

She set it just out of reach of the shell, and motioned you back. After a few minutes a tentative grubfoot poked out of the shell, tapping the table, and then another, and the little tousled head appeared. You both kept perfectly still until he'd crawled almost all the way onto the plate and was ecstatically involved in stuffing tuna into his tiny toothy maw, and then Jade deftly took the shell away and distracted him by petting his hair. 

Both of you had more than a few tiny grub bites to show for the night's work, but you got the rest of the tuna and a couple bottles of hastily-made fish broth down him, and put the others in the fridge for the next day, and cuddled him against your shoulder while he slept, waving his little legs in some distant dream. 

You were yawning hard enough to make your eyes water when Jade finally ordered you to your cupe, assuring you she'd take the best of care of your grub, and you'd been tired enough to go without argument; waking up just now had reset your worry-meter. But he does...seem to be okay. Despite the fact he has your fucked-up blood, he seems to be okay.

You are so fucking lost and you find, sitting on the couch you share with your alien notmatesprit, with your clonescendant cuddled in your arms, that for the first time in your life you do not mind in the least.


End file.
